Item 21 asks the Council to approve an amendment to their contract with the Birmingham-Jefferson County Transit Authority (better known to most of us as MAX). It would allow the council to provide up to an additional $3 million to the cash-strapped agency, increasing their allocation to more than $8 million. The routes and hours are to be established by the City Council Transportation Committee.

Item 28 gives us a first glance at the Jazz in the Park Concerts sponsored by Magic City Smooth Jazz. The free concerts would be held every Sunday from July 4-25, 2010 at several locations throughout the city. The item includes the city agreeing to provide up to $10,000 towards the cost of the series.

Item 33 allows The Big Guy atop Red Mountain to have some necessary repair work done to his pedestal. Vulcan Painters of Bessemer submitted the low (and only) bid of $27,672 and acceptance of the item allows repair work to the pedestal to proceed.

That’s what the topic will be at tomorrow’s Operation New Birmingham breakfast briefing, particularly why it would make sense to get on these new buses, the Breeze circulators. Charles Ball, executive director of the Regional Planning Commission of Greater Birmingham plans to be available to answer questions about the current status of the three year old In Town Transit Partnership and about how the downtown circulator would serve as the basis of a rethinking of the region’s transit system. You’ll be able to see portions of the presentation on the ITP website beginning late tomorrow morning.

Remember yesterday’s On the agenda post? Well, according to sources, some City Council members said they needed extra time to determine whether the $1.7 million paratransit expenditure would be deducted from the BJCTA’s FY2009 operating budget or would be in addition to that amount, leading to a two-week delay on the item.

Before we return to silent mode, we figured it would make sense to stress to folks to check out the tranist authority’s new website. New features include a ticker-style rider alert, planned integration of Google Transit, and most importantly, an easier to read and understand map for the system’s users.

A $4 million shortfall in the Birmingham Jefferson County Transit Authority (a.k.a. the folks responsible for our MAX bus system) has the potential to do just by causing them to cut Saturday service and downtown DART service among other things. Check out the Birmingham News’ story so you have an idea of what’s going on before you head out to this afternoon’s city council transit committee meeting (at 4 p.m.) called by Councilwoman Carol Duncan to figure out next steps.